Introduction

Imperialism is indeed a regularly recurring historical phenomenon, calling for neither approval nor condemnation in the abstract, and a more profitable exercise is to consider particular imperialisms and assess their spirit and their achievements. It may perhaps be taken for granted that for a people who have reached a high level of political consciousness foreign rule is spiritually debilitating. Changes of fashion are as decisive in thought as in clothes, and one of the most interesting examples of such a change is provided by the contrast between the self-confident imperialism of nineteenth-century Britain and the vague belief of the English-speaking peoples in self-determination as a principle of universal validity. Britain was in fact the catalytic agent by which Western influence was brought to bear on India, and the only practical approach to our problem is to examine conditions and tendencies in pre-British India, and to consider how they were modified in the British period.